The Search for Happiness


Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja

THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS:                                                   Each one of us are in Search of Happiness.  The more we try by materialistic approach the further it seems to elude.   Those who adopt Sprititual means come closer and closer to Happiness culminating into Peace.   Here is some excerpts of Swami Narayana Maharajas version…for a fruitful Search for Happiness.

PURE LOVE AND AFFECTION

THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE



I’m very happy to be traveling and preaching in the Western countries, but I have not come to give anything new. I am simply following Srila Bhaktivedanta Svami Maharaja, and giving the same thing that he came to the West to give. Svami Maharaja is my bosom friend and instructing guru. He also did not come to this world to give anything new; rather, he has simply given what he received from his Gurudeva and from all the teachers in our disciplic succession, which goes back to Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.



Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is actually the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna Himself. However, He came in the form of His own devotee to teach us the process of transcendental devotional service, by which we can develop pure love and affection for Him. Why? Everyone wants peace and happiness in their lives, but I don’t think that the advancement of material science has actually made any one happy. Happiness really depends on love. We cannot find happiness without prema, or love and affection. This is our real necessity: happiness and love. We want pure happiness, and pure love and affection, but we can’t find them here. Nevertheless, they do exist. We are trying to find happiness by developing impure love and affection for imperfect personalities. The Vedic literatures tell us that we can only be happy by developing pure love and affection for the supremely pure personality, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.



Throughout the Vedas and Upanisads we read that we are parts and parcels of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna. Our constitutional nature is to serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead with love and affection. Unfortunately we have forgotten this, and that is why we are bound by maya in this material world. Maya has imprisoned us, and she is giving us the sorrows and sufferings of life: birth, death, old age, disease, and so on. This is just so that we will understand that we cannot be happy in this world.



We cannot become happy by making material arrangements, or by trying to fulfill material desires, or by collecting material possessions. We can only be happy in this world and the next by serving the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna. We should chant and remember His holy names and glories.


Posted on Divine Awakening Web Page dt 27/4/2011

SUMMER TIME


I love to go awandering along the mountain track and as I go I love to sing my knapsack on my back……………….

Val-da-ree val-da-raa……..

The above scouts song we used to sing in schooldays. What fun we had while trekking ,at picnics . Gone are the days when my heart was young and full of spirit.

I know, now I am not that young but my heart is ever green ever young and my memories are fresh and fragrant as this morning breeze of Summer. My morning walks to the Temple below the hilltop is ever energizing. Specially the great neem trees are blooming with flowers. Gifting the passerby with their ephemeral scent. I love to hum the song while the bells chime in rhythm.

The calm golden rays of the new born sun evokes a spiritual bond . I greet the Sun God with folded hands. I know we(all) the creation has an inkling a bondage with him. Living or non living all have been created from him and unto him. I hum… “All things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small… all things wise and wonderful the lord God made them all..”

The lovely dainty flowers every where be it in my balcony earthenpots or roadside trees have sprouted their heads in sprightly dance. Wordsworth was evoked by the lovely daffodles..my heart too is dancing in glee .in the jocund company of Summer Flowers.

I reminisce my childhood..the summer vacations..specially the afternoons in the mangrove. We pelted stones on the green unripe mangoes. The cherries lurching in the ventilators..the plucking of strawberries in the backyard. All so mischevious ventures.. what was the song of then those famed songs in everyones lips..

Stawberries cherries and the angels kissing spring,

My summer wine is really made of all these things..

Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time …

And I will give to you…Summer Wine.. O Summer Wine..(Nancy Sinatra)

Our college campus too is in full bloom. The greenery of the nursery is worth seeing . The different species of all kinds of plants … the lovely roses have earned trophies in the contest. Imagine our independent cottages..built at the time of britishers are blooming with trees .. to name a few the lime, custard apple, berries,tamarind plums,mangoes pears the drumsticks etc Our ancestors the monkeys (primates) are in huge numbers to relish the new ripe mangoes. At time they do not knock the back.door of your kitchen and elope with the container of chapattis. Their infants clung to their stomach bracing the hazardous leaps of their mothers. .From one destination to another leaping on trees and terraces in search of food and shelter.

One such summer walk I saw a cow writhing in pain. She had fallen in the canal dug for drainages. No one heard her cry and those who saw her simply ignored. I felt pain in my heart. In spite of our eyes we turn a blind eye, inspite of our ears we turn a deaf ear towards these living beings. We have no sympathy for the animals…I contacted some people and found her owner. It was a herculean task to drag the poor thing out safely. She was bruised and bled profusely. That night I slept soundly,cause I had done a good job of helping save a life indeed. We worship, read avidly the tales make use of them. But when it comes to looking after them we refrain. Our own existence in this beautiful Earth is correlated with plants and animals both. ..The flora and fauna are a part and parcel of our life our sojourn on Earth.


The above article got published in The Hitavada Dt.14/4/2011

SHREE RAM NAVRATRI

Sant Tulsidas (Tulsidas (also Tulasidas, Gosvāmī Tulsīdās, Tulasī Dāsa) (1532 – 1623)was a great Awadhi bhakta (devotee), philosopher, composer, and the author of Ramcharitmanas, an epic poem and scripture devoted to the Hindu God Rama.)


By Swami Durgananda

The Beginning

In the 16th century Rajapur – about 200 km east of Allahabad – in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, there live a rather gullible brahamana couple: Atmaram Dube and Hulsi Devi. The year 1532. One day, at a somewhat inauspicious moment, was born to them a male child. Even at this happy moment the mother was frightened. Born after 12 months of gestation But it is believed that it was asterism mula that was on the ascent then – a period of time known as abhuktamula. According to the then popular belief, a child born during this period was destined to bring death to its parents. The only remedy, it was believed, was for the parents to abandon the child at birth – or atleast not to look at it for the first 8 years!, the baby was rather huge and had a full complement of teeth! Under which unfortunate star this child was born is not known for certain.

The utterly poor father had nothing in his house for the celebration of the child’s birth or for the naming ceremony. Meanwhile, the mother died. Weighed down circumstances and superstition, the father abandoned the child. Chuniya, the mother-in-law of the midwife who had helped him during the birth of the child, wet-nursed. Such was the child’s fate that Chuniya too died after five years and he was left wandering, looking for morsels of food here and there, taking occasional shelter at a Hanuman temple. This was the boy who would later be recognized as Sant Tulsidas and excite bhakti en masse with soul inspiring couplets



Such was the turn of events when Narharidas, a descendant of Ramanand, was commanded in a dream to pick up an abandoned boy and instruct him in the timeless story of Sri Ram. He spotted the boy, who at that time went by the name Rambola , took him to Ayodhya, and completed his sacred thread ceremony. From a reference to a tulsi leaf used during that ceremony. Narharidas named Tulsiram, which later became Tulsidas. After about 10 months of living in Ayodhya, at the confluence of the rivers Sarayu and Ghagara – where they lived together for five years. It was here that Tulisdas heard the fascinating story of Sri Ram. We can well imagine what fire must have been ignited in the boy Tulsidas when the immortal story of Sri Ram fell upon his pure heart.

Another sadhu, Shesha Sanatana by name, now came into Tulsidasa’s life and took him to Varanasi, the city of learning or light. It was here that Tulsi learned Sanskrit, including Panini’s grammar. We read that Tulsidas was extremely bright, could remember texts after hearing them only once, and became adept in Sanskrit. That he had a good command of Sanskrit can be known from his few Sanskrit writings and the Sanskrit words, apposite and accurate, thrown casually but widely into his other works.

Marriage and Renunciation

Tulsidas married a girl whose name was Ratnavali. We are told the simple couple lived at Rajapur and that their only son, Tarak died in infancy. Tulsidas was extremely devoted to his wife. This attachment may have been in the form of inchoate form of bhakti – wrongly directed towards a human being – for it was this love, when freed from human attachment that blossomed into an unbounded love for God.

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